A 49-year-old man from Albergen in Overijssel has been sentenced to five months in prison, three suspended, for making threats and other intimidating behaviour towards the mayor of the town.

The man was totally opposed to a decision to house asylum seekers in a former hotel in the town, which was later set alight.

A meeting to inform locals of the plan, at which the man was present, escalated into the harassment of mayor Anko Postma and local councillors. “We were like rats in a trap,” the magistrate quoted the mayor as saying.

The man left the meeting, returning with a GPS tracker which he placed underneath the mayor’s car. The airtag was found by accident by his daughter who detected it on her phone.

According to the man, the mayor did not live in Tubbergen, of which Albergen forms part, and the tracker was meant to prove it, he said.

Apart from placing the tracker, the man had also shared pictures of Postma’s house and a picture of a gun pointed at the hotel. He also posted photos that referred to World War II, in which the mayor was called a “Nazi whore” and a “traitor”.

“This is fearmongering and is undermining the authority of the mayor,” the magistrate said. The man has also been banned from contacting the mayor for three years or coming near the town hall during that time.

Timmermans

On Tuesday, a court in The Hague sentenced a 54-year-old man to a year in jail, six months suspended, for threatening PvdA leader Frans Timmermans and for possessing a loaded gun.

The man placed a text accompanied by a GIF of a guillotine in action, which, the judge said, constituted a death threat. When police searched his house they found a large amount of ammunition and guns, one of which had a shortened stock and barrel.

More threats

A total of 67 people were prosecuted last year for threatening MPs and cabinet ministers, nearly double the number in 2022.

The specialist police team dealing with threats towards politicians received 750 complaints in 2023, while the prosecution service said the law had been broken in 600 cases.

The increase in cases coming to court was partly because relatively more threats came from the Netherlands rather than abroad, making it easier to identify and prosecute the culprits.